NEW POST: The Holidays Are Here

A Guide to Food Elimination Diets, Protocols, and Benefits

The holiday season brings joy, celebration, and unfortunately for many people, digestive distress. From stuffing to pumpkin pie, holiday foods can trigger a range of uncomfortable symptoms in sensitive individuals.

This makes the post-holiday period an ideal time to consider an elimination diet–a structured approach to identifying food sensitivities that may be impacting your health.

What is an Elimination Diet?

An elimination diet is considered the gold standard for uncovering food sensitivities and intolerances. Unlike food allergies, which typically cause immediate and obvious reactions affecting less than 10% of children and about 2% of adults, food sensitivities can be subtle and may take hours or even days to manifest. These sensitivities affect up to 20% of the population, making them significantly more common than true allergies.

Food sensitivities often occur due to increased intestinal permeability, enzyme defects, or pharmacological effects of food components. The delayed response makes them particularly challenging to identify without a systematic approach. Symptoms can range from digestive issues like bloating and abdominal pain to seemingly unrelated problems like brain fog, fatigue, or skin conditions.